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Thoughts about stuff being “tainted”?


Guest Phil10

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Can anybody relate? I had some big plans for my stag night having an ex footballer but it fell through so I worry the stag night will be tainted with one less person. 

My wedding band split and I had to book an alternative so I worry the wedding is tainted as for me the band had a unique sound and i struggling to get my head round a different sounding band. 

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Phil, I suspect the reason you are having these new hocus pocus thoughts is because you have not dealt with the old thoughts. You've placed yourself in a position where your mind can create all sorts of silly thoughts. Unfortunately you buy into them.

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2 minutes ago, PolarBear said:

Phil, I suspect the reason you are having these new hocus pocus thoughts is because you have not dealt with the old thoughts. You've placed yourself in a position where your mind can create all sorts of silly thoughts. Unfortunately you buy into them.

I have dealt with the old ones by zapping them to the back of my mind rather than touching bins. The new thoughts are due to recent circumstances. The problem is I want everything perfect and something now being tainted may mean the day may not be quite as good. 

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It's you making up this belief that things can be tainted. It's certainly not in any manual or textbook. Same as you believing there is something wrong with bins and dirty laundry. It's all make believe, a fantasy. There's no truth in any of it.

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10 minutes ago, PolarBear said:

It's you making up this belief that things can be tainted. It's certainly not in any manual or textbook. Same as you believing there is something wrong with bins and dirty laundry. It's all make believe, a fantasy. There's no truth in any of it.

Yes to other people it might seem no issue but this stuff feels real to me life doesn’t seem real, bins cause anxiety it’s not textbook but I’m sure people with ocd get these type of thoughts.

I mean worst case what would happen is I don’t enjoy the evening or I worry about the old band and it spoils my night 

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35 minutes ago, Phil10 said:

I have dealt with the old ones by zapping them to the back of my mind rather than touching bins. The new thoughts are due to recent circumstances. The problem is I want everything perfect and something now being tainted may mean the day may not be quite as good. 

You most likely would never have had this obsession about the band and the day being tainted if you had done cognitive therapy and response prevention on your bins and dirty laundry fears.

OCD as it grows is going to make your world smaller and smaller. You need to take action.

The more you avoid, the worse things get.

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5 minutes ago, Orwell1984 said:

You most likely would never have had this obsession about the band and the day being tainted if you had done cognitive therapy and response prevention on your bins and dirty laundry fears.

OCD as it grows is going to make your world smaller and smaller. You need to take action.

The more you avoid, the worse things get.

This is absolutely true. I am doing exposure for one particular theme of my OCD, but I have lots of other fears. Yet, in doing therapy for this theme, I've started to see a reduction in the other themes as well. When things were worse, all of the different themes flared up. CBT is just learning how to manage your anxiety and you can apply this to many different themes.

On another note, congratulations on your upcoming wedding Phil! I hope you do enjoy the day.

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Phil your fears about this are just another theme of OCD. The need for perfection is another common theme of the disorder. 

Perfectionism OCD is as worthless and pointless as any other OCD theme. 

Remember, we treat all themes in just the same way. The sufferer learns to see that there is a false exaggerated or revulsive core belief underneath their fears, and not to give belief to them. Then stand up to them in exposure and response prevention - and otherwise note then refocus away - until anxiety fades along with the power of the OCD. 

Follow this path and you can overcome this, and in time all your themes. 

Remember, OCD fears are worthless nonsense to everyone else - whether it's magical thinking, contamination, sexual preference, false memory, perfectionism, health - whatever. 

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1 hour ago, Phil10 said:

Yes to other people it might seem no issue but this stuff feels real to me

Every OCD sufferers fears are "real" to them.  If they weren't, the disorder wouldn't exist, this forum wouldn't exist, and none of us would be here posting on it.

You are buying in to the flawed premise that having the thought means the thought matters. Its simply not so.  If you had the thought "what if I can fly" it doesn't mean you can fly.  If you had the thought "What if I win the lottery and become a millionaire!" it doesn't at all make that more likely to come true.

 

1 hour ago, Phil10 said:

it’s not textbook but I’m sure people with ocd get these type of thoughts.

No, your behavior is pretty much textbook OCD.
 

1 hour ago, Phil10 said:

I mean worst case what would happen is I don’t enjoy the evening or I worry about the old band and it spoils my night 

You think thats the worst case?  You aren't even close! For example, what if the new band turns out to be a secret group of terrorists, they take your wedding hostage.  That would be worse right?  It also probably sounds utterly ridiculous (because it pretty much is, its like the plot of a bad movie).  I could come up with increasingly worse, increasingly ridiculous but technically possible scenarios.  The point is you can ALWAYS come up with a scenario where a situation goes poorly, but that doesn't mean its GOING to go poorly.  

If you do worry about that band it probably will spoil your night, you'll have wasted your energy on something unimportant and missed out on something important, all because of a condition "tainted ness" that you created.  But there IS another, better way, you can choose not to accept OCD false claims.  You can choose to recognize these thoughts of "contamination" and "taint' for what they are, garbage.  Even though the idea of it makes you feel anxiety, that doesn't mean the feared thought is real.  People feel anxiety about unreal things all the time.  People feel anxiety watching a scary movie.  They feel anxiety when its dark and windy at night.  They feel anxiety when they get on an airplane.  They feel anxiety when they think they see a spider.   Choose to accept that sometimes you feel unwanted anxiety, but that doesn't mean the things you fear are actually a real threat.  Choose to accept that sometimes you have thoughts that make you feel uncomfortable but that doesn't mean the situation is more likely to be real or true.  Choose to follow the path to OCD recovery.  The alternative is to continue as you are, suffering more and more as you fall deeper in to the trap OCD has laid.  That would be the real worst case.

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Phil, don't make  the common conceit of thinking your OCD is somehow special. In fact everything you describe comes across as textbook stuff. If it wasn't a case of empathizing, as a fellow sufferer, I'd have to stifle a yawn. 

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18 hours ago, dksea said:

Every OCD sufferers fears are "real" to them.  If they weren't, the disorder wouldn't exist, this forum wouldn't exist, and none of us would be here posting on it.

You are buying in to the flawed premise that having the thought means the thought matters. Its simply not so.  If you had the thought "what if I can fly" it doesn't mean you can fly.  If you had the thought "What if I win the lottery and become a millionaire!" it doesn't at all make that more likely to come true.

 

No, your behavior is pretty much textbook OCD.
 

You think thats the worst case?  You aren't even close! For example, what if the new band turns out to be a secret group of terrorists, they take your wedding hostage.  That would be worse right?  It also probably sounds utterly ridiculous (because it pretty much is, its like the plot of a bad movie).  I could come up with increasingly worse, increasingly ridiculous but technically possible scenarios.  The point is you can ALWAYS come up with a scenario where a situation goes poorly, but that doesn't mean its GOING to go poorly.  

If you do worry about that band it probably will spoil your night, you'll have wasted your energy on something unimportant and missed out on something important, all because of a condition "tainted ness" that you created.  But there IS another, better way, you can choose not to accept OCD false claims.  You can choose to recognize these thoughts of "contamination" and "taint' for what they are, garbage.  Even though the idea of it makes you feel anxiety, that doesn't mean the feared thought is real.  People feel anxiety about unreal things all the time.  People feel anxiety watching a scary movie.  They feel anxiety when its dark and windy at night.  They feel anxiety when they get on an airplane.  They feel anxiety when they think they see a spider.   Choose to accept that sometimes you feel unwanted anxiety, but that doesn't mean the things you fear are actually a real threat.  Choose to accept that sometimes you have thoughts that make you feel uncomfortable but that doesn't mean the situation is more likely to be real or true.  Choose to follow the path to OCD recovery.  The alternative is to continue as you are, suffering more and more as you fall deeper in to the trap OCD has laid.  That would be the real worst case.

Yes you are correct if I worry about it I may not enjoy the band which I have. Sadly I believe it’s in my nature to react like this with dissapointment however my ocd does make me focus more on it than I have to. It was stressful situation but having anxiety or ocd makes the situation feel worse. A worst scenario would also be if as it’s short notice I had no band at all so I guess I have to say well atleast I still have a band, the numbers will be the same many of the guests will never know the original band weren’t coming as I only told a handful of people. 

And yes you are right about flying or thinking that basically my issue is my head right now is “I am what I think” this is basically my issue I give so much importance to the thoughts I have. I realise let’s me honest all my thoughts and psychology ideas cant all be right but my head believes every one but the reality is this I am what I think is causing me the issues here?

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Phil. 

I learned in CBT therapy that we have no responsibility for the core beliefs and intrusions of OCD. 

In OCD a "scanner" searches for issues that match with a trigger linked to the underlying OCD core belief of a particular theme. 

When the scanner finds a match, then our mind zooms in on it and hard focuses onto it. 

How we respond to this determines if we fall into an anxiety cycle, or disconnect from the focus lock. 

CBT, plus for some of us The Four Steps and mindfulness, are the tools we can use to break the lock and eventually switch off the scanner. 

It works if we believe so and follow the teachings of these therapy tools. The more sufferers that commit, heart and soul, to this process, then the more the number of sufferers likely to recover. 

We have a choice. Carry on as we are and get more and more layers of OCD restrictions ruining our daily lives. 

Or devoutly follow the path of CBT THERAPY - the gold standard treatment for OCD - and likely become a whole lot better. 

Plenty of people leave our forums when they have done this, they no longer have a need. 

But many report in with their success before they go. 

This is evidence-based therapy at the height of its game - with the evidence of its success proven by the feedback. 

One to one CBT therapy with a clinical psychologist really experienced in OCD is the blue riband treatment. 

But those following the pointers here, asking questions when needed, working through CBT self-help can get there too. 

 

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Let's all remember the code: repetitive obsessional negative thinking leading to the urge to carry out compulsions to fix the resultant disorder is OCD.

And we can carry out these focused negative obsessional thoughts about anything. 

To everyone else they will appear false, exaggerated or revulsive. 

To the sufferer they repetitively stay stuck in mental focus and seem totally believable as real. 

This is the recipe for OCD. 

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9 hours ago, Phil10 said:

Sadly I believe it’s in my nature to react like this with dissapointment however my ocd does make me focus more on it than I have to.

As i've said before, ultimately how you choose to approach your OCD, how you choose to approach your life in general really, is up to you.  None of us can choose for you.  If you want to choose to accept that this is how your life is going to be, while that makes me sad for you, it is what your life will be.  However, evidence shows that you DON'T have to choose to live that way, you DON'T have to react with disappointment, even absent OCD.  Applying the principals of CBT would not only allow you to treat your OCD, it would also allow you to change the way you approach life in general, including reacting with disappointment when things don't go as planned.  It seems like these sorts of things are "in our nature" when the reality is they are just deeply ingrained habits, habits that have become our default behavior over time. But they are not unchangeable.  It might be hard to change them, it might take time, but people can and do change.  Now there are certainly behaviors and mindsets about ourselves that we don't want to change, which is fine, you don't have to reinvent your personality completely.  And there probably are tendencies that are highly difficult or perhaps even impossible to change completely, but I believe, and the science backs up, the idea that a lot of our thinking is not as set in stone as we may believe.

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